Bid Farewell To One Of Instagram’s Original Features

Just as the world was getting used to Instagram’s new algorithm and the eerily familiar concept that is Instagram Stories, the app has gone and changed another crucial feature: Photo Maps. It might take you a second to remember what that is, and that’s exactly why the company is nixing the section from users’ profiles. According to Mashable, Instagram started removing the Photo Map tab — which shows a user’s photo locations on a big world map — from profiles last week because it was “not widely used.” Soon, you won’t be able to view your personal Photo Map either. This won’t affect users’ ability to geotag for locations, and nor will it affect Instagram’s API (a feature that allows companies to pull tagged location information from public posts). Rather, it stops people from being able to see the full map of all the places users have posted in one convenient place. Some suspect this is another reason for the feature’s removal, since people had been using these locations to stalk celebrities.

This change shows a possible shift in Instagram’s goals. Now that Snapchat is one of its main competitors, the new focus seems to be on real-time updates rather than checking into locations. Screenshot your Photo Maps while you still can, but let’s be honest — you probably didn’t care abut it anyway.